Comparing Barack Obama's campaign to "a fragile patient who must be checked on every day," noted Winfrey-esque new-age thinker Deepak Chorpa penned a piece in today's Chronicle, one that shows a reasonable fear that Obama won't get reelected. And since "no sitting President since Roosevelt has been re-elected with unemployment over 7.4%," there's a mild-to-sorta-good chance that President Romney could be on the horizon come November. But. That doesn't mean the Republican party's "ostrich with its head in the sand"-like stance on, well, almost everything won't resulting in handing Obama the election on a red, white, and blue commemorative plate.

With regard to trends this election season, Chopra muses:

Reason vs. Unreason: This is the major contest, leaving all policy details aside. The New York Times pointed out that the various Republican hopefuls were outdoing themselves in extremism, making claims and charges against Obama "that would be laughable if they were not an insult to intelligence and the President." One can make light of seeing one right-winger after another bob up to challenge Romney's all but certain nomination. As one late-night comic said, "How many more clowns do you have in that car?" It has been a circus of irrationality.

Unreason tells a host of fabrications as part of its twisted narrative. There's the deportation of all illegals, for example, which has no chance of ever happening. But even the moderate alternative (moderate in this surreal landscape, that is) of Mitt Romney goes further into irrationality. Whether he means it or not, Romney vows to allow states to make abortion illegal, to lower taxes for the rich even further, to double the size of Guantanamo, reinstate torture, and gut both Obamacare and financial regulations.

Chopra goes on to pine for better Republican years, the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon crapped all over the White House (or, depending on your appreciation of Ronald Reagan's dementia handlers, since the early 1980s). Chopra goes on to say:

Tolerance vs. Intolerance: A democracy is upheld through mutual toleration. This includes tolerating people who are in favor of intolerance. Through 30 years of reactionary conditioning, we've allowed basic values to deteriorate. It's tragic that the very word "values" has been coopted by the most intolerant sector of society, but ever since Nixon's Southern strategy, the once-admired Republican Party has decayed into a tent under which not just traditional conservatives but gun nuts, racists, religious fundamentalists, and the like find shelter. Obama has had only three years to try and counter such toxic conditioning; it will take more.

The zany eyeglasses fan also points out a few of Obama's (many) shortcomings over the last four years, including not passing the best kind of health care and our nation's sorry employment rate. But will Obama win? Probably. The GOP has a fertile garden of loose-cannon nutbag characters sprouting like weeds, which is too bad (and completely avoidable), but no serious contenders. At least not any as far as we're concerned.

Read the entire piece here.